Notes

A Common Ancestor

The music for A Common Ancestor contains an assembly
of sampled sounds, including insects, birds, animals, as well as
environmental sounds from forest, wetland, desert, ocean. The music is
divided into ten contiguous sections. The sampled sounds that comprise each
section are modified by signal processing, or trigger various sound
generators via MIDI control. The structure of the music is generated from
integers derived from the letters of the names of each creature, or
environmental sound. The integers determine the duration of sound or
silence for each voice. In addition to the processed sound, sampled sounds
occur throughout the music in their purely acoustic form, providing
secondary voices that form a quiet textural background.

Sidereus
Nuncius

At the turn of the sixteenth century,
Galileo observed never before seen details of the face of the Moon, the
Milky Way, and nebulous stars with a powerful new telescope. These dramatic
discoveries helped to establish the eventual acceptance of the
heliocentricity of the Solar System.

Galileo also observed for
the first time four Moons orbiting the planet Jupiter. In March 1610, he
published his findings under the title Sidereus Nuncius, which ultimately
caused an international stir. The new twenty-powered 'spyglass' or
telescope used to make the observations was the first scientific instrument
to amplify the human senses. Galileo was credited with being the first
person to point the spyglass upward 'toward the heavens'.

Signals from space include the sounds of Saturn recorded by NASA, Huygens
Satellite radio and carrier signals, radar.

Mercury is the closest planet to our Sun. It is the smallest and
least massive of the inner planets, although it is almost as dense as the
Earth. The most distinguishing feature on Mercury's surface is its
craters, which are arranged in patterns similar to that of the moon. Small
craters break into larger ones, rather than large craters imposed on
smaller ones. The largest crater has been dubbed Beethoven, while others
have been named after a variety of famous composers, painters and
novelists. The viola plays a secondary role in the music. The viola music
was produced using a first generation Kurzweil synthesizer.

In number of species, insects are by far the largest in the animal
kingdom. There are nearly a half million known species of insects, and some
zoologists believe that there are perhaps 10 million species in the tropics
yet undiscovered . Their persistence and survivability on the planet is
equaled only by bacteria.

We rely on insects for
pollination which provides us with most of our fruits and many vegetables.
Insects are crucial predators of plant pests and other harmful species, and
they are important sources of food for animals and even carnivorous plants.
Insects are found in virtually every environment on Earth, including in
air, on water, on and under the ground.

A nebula is a region or cloud of
interstellar gas which, when illuminated by a nearby star, will produce a
brightly colored image. The Horsehead Nebula is located in the southernmost
tip of the Orion sky. It appears as a pinkish-purple haze with a prominent
dark mass bearing a striking resemblance to the head of a knight in chess.
Nebulae typically function as stellar nurseries, providing a birthplace
where new stars are formed. Like Craters of Mercury, the viola and cello play a secondary
role in the music. Both instruments were generated on the Kurzweil 2000
synthesizer.

Transparent
Dreamsfor Computer-controlled Synthesizers (1987)

* Sleeping is the way in which the brain suspends conscious
activity. Dreaming, particularly REM dreaming, is a period of intense
cognitive activity, in which the brain relies on internal information to
form various states of mind. These dreams are shaped solely by memories,
without controlled or conscious thought.

Except for certain
aspects of lucid dreaming, the form and content of dreams do not follow
conventional scenarios. Dreams are typically narrative, but do not seem to
call on the higher centers of language for structural continuity or
meaning. The result is that the language of dreams is fragmented, the plots
are confused, natural laws are disobeyed, and obsession, phobia, and
paranoia are commonplace. All of these dream characteristics are synonymous
with textbook definitions of mental pathologies. And all are centered on
internal dialogue, involving little or no interaction with the outside
world.

Contemporary dream research describes the meaning of
dreams as transparent and immediate, rather than symbolic or Freudian. It
is believed that dreams involve strong emotions, but have no inherent
meaning. It is also thought that the bizarre plots and storylines of dreams
reflect an attempt by the brain to make sense of the chaos generated from
partially random signals.

We typically cycle though four to six
REM (rapid eye movement) dreams each night, lasting from 15 to 30 minutes.
Dreaming begins in the brain stem. First an emotion is generated. Only then
does the brain assign a plot, characters, or setting.

Dreams reflect our personal history, including thoughts and worries that
involve recent activity. Two-thirds of our dreams are emotionally negative.
Fear and anxiety dominate about a third of our dreams, while another 15
percent involve anger. Although it is still controversial about why we
sleep and dream, recent theories suggest that sleep is the brain's way
of reconfiguring itself, allowing time to convert short-term memories to
long-term ones.

A Living Planetfor
‘Live’ Keyboard Synthesizer and Computer-controlled
Synthesizerswith Interactive Music Software (1992)

The Earth is a living planet, although it still remains a mystery how
life began. Various theories suggest different possibilities for the origin
of life, including spontaneous generation, self-organization and
complexity, and panspermia, which refers to organisms that have traveled to
Earth from an extraterrestrial source, such as a meteorite. It is highly
unlikely that the Earth is the only planet containing life in the
universe.

The dynamic ecosphere, the interaction of various
environments at the same scale, results in a constant flux of material and
energy exchange. This delicate balance between the atmosphere, biosphere,
hydrosphere, and lithosphere is what identifies the Earth as a living
planet.

In this music, I have employed my own interactive music
software MachPerformer. The music is played on a keyboard synthesizer from
a score and input into a computer. The computer program 'listens'
to the music being played, and generates a musical 'response' which
is output to a separate set of synthesizers. The whole process occurs in
real time, resulting in an interactivity of 'live' and
computer-generated music which is recorded for playback. The musical score
used to generate the keyboard input is based on the five kingdoms of life
on Earth, which contain all known life-forms.